Siblings Are Forever
by Lucinda M. H. Cheshir
Summary: Trapped inside the jade suit of armor, Iblis reflects on his family, stirring up deep and depressing memories for himself. Oneshot. Disclaimer: I don't own anything but my OC's: Lucia, Dimme, and Azazel Teer. Read, enjoy, and review!


**Hey, y'all, this is just a short little oneshot that I wrote to combat my panic caused by my finals... I came up with the idea the other day in the shower, so it's really just Iblis rambling in third person about his little sister Dimme Teer (an OC I created, she's Azazel's mom.)**

**Peace,**

**-Lucy**

Iblis could barely control his claustrophobia, confined as he was to the inside of the jade sarcophagus that the Great Khan had created for him. Iblis tried not to panic, but the knowledge that he'd never be released from the jade prison pervaded him with a sense of unrelenting dread. He'd managed to shrink himself down so that he could move about more easily, and make himself comfortable for the rest of eternity, but it had been difficult. It seemed as though the sarcophagus was slowly but surely sucking his life force, his _Neshamah_, away, even if he conserved it as much as was possible. Having little else to do, Iblis turned to thought.

At first, he merely meditated on philosophical matters, such as Plato's theory of a realm of ideas, but eventually Iblis could resist no longer and began to reflect on his own life. More specifically, his own, dysfunctional family.

Most djinn, both good and bad, believed that because he had been renowned as the most evil djinn on Earth, (at least until his nephew, Azazel, had taken that title from him,) that Iblis had never felt regret, guilt, or, most prominently of all, love.

Iblis would never admit it to anyone, but this was quite untrue. And all three had been caused by his little sister, Dimme.

Iblis had been about twenty when his mother, Lucia Teer, sent him a telegram all the way from London (at the time, Iblis had been staying in San Francisco, causing mayhem and other bad luck for mundanes,) telling him that he was no longer an only child, and to come immediately back to London to visit his newborn baby sister.

Iblis, disliking infants very much, but knowing what the consequences would be if he disobeyed his mother, reluctantly hopped on his whirlwind and made his way back home to London, and to the large townhouse that his mother, and occasionally his father, Iblis Sr., occupied. Back then, Iblis had had very little patience for traveling as the mundanes did, slowly across the North American continent, and then even more slowly across the Atlantic Ocean. Whirlwinds were, Iblis reflected, much quicker, even these days.

As an infant, Dimme Teer had been rather unpleasant for Iblis to even look at, reminding him all too painfully of himself at that age. The incontinent horror of being a baby bothered Iblis, especially as he grew older and began to remember all of the loathsome details of it. She had peach-fuzz blonde hair, big, rather manipulatively adorable brown eyes, and a bit of a snubbed nose that was quite unlike Iblis' hooked nose. Iblis grimaced politely at his mother, privately thinking that he'd never come to visit them again, at the very least, not until Dimme grew up a little bit.

Much to Iblis' dismay, he was forced to come to London again only about ten years after Dimme was born, responding to his father's order that, since Lucia had gotten herself bottled up by the Blue Djinn, Ayesha, for a still-unknown to Iblis offense, Iblis should take care of his little sister. Since Iblis Teer, Sr. was the head of the Ifrit tribe of djinn, he expected absolute loyalty from all of the Ifrit, most especially from his children themselves. Knowing this, Iblis had little choice but to do as his father bade him.

Dimme had changed quite a bit in ten years. Her hair had grown out to become lustrous, long, and blond, she knew how to take care of herself, and had even developed her own sense of style. She still hadn't gotten her dragon teeth out, but proved to be a very capable girl all the same, if quite shy of the elder brother she held no memory of ever meeting.

Soon after they had reaquainted themselves with one another, World War two broke out, and London no longer became a safe place to live, even for a djinn as powerful as Iblis was then. Neither of them liked to admit it, but Iblis and Dimme were becoming rather attached to each other, forming that bond that only brothers and sisters share with each other.

Iblis had felt that taking them as far away as was possible from the fighting in Europe was advisable, even though he dearly wished to cause a little bad luck for both sides, because, being Iblis, he liked nothing better than to see silly mundanes suffer at his hands.

As unobtrusively as he could manage, Iblis flew himself and Dimme across the Atlantic and back to America, where he finally settled on staying in the Midwest region, as isolated as he could figure. Indianapolis, to be more precise. It was there, in the midst of the War that Iblis had chosen to settle down. Years passed in a faint blur for the two Teers, and before too long, Dimme's dragon teeth appeared in her mouth and were promptly extracted by Iblis himself.

Then a real problem presented itself for Iblis and Dimme. Before she could use her djinn power, Dimme had to fast in the desert with only a flame for company. Now, usually, Iblis would have simply gone over to Egypt, but World War two was still going strong, so Iblis had to improvise. He took his little sister to Las Vegas, where he hoped that their father was, regulating the Ifrit casinos there so that they were suitably fit for dishing out bad luck. Iblis Teer, Sr. was not in Las Vegas, however, so Iblis, taking it in stride, merely took his sister out into the nearby desert and explained himself how the djinn came to be.

Several more years passed in relative contentment for the Teer siblings, until finally, at age 23, Dimme decided that it was time for her to become independent from her very attentive elder brother. Dimme had been the only one who Iblis had ever allowed himself to trust completely, although neither of them would ever admit any of this to anyone, not even to each other. It was an almost telepathic agreement between the two that they'd never speak of it.

Nearly fifty years, give or take a few years, passed before Dimme came to Iblis again. And she came crying, something that no Ifrit, especially not a Teer, would ever be caught dead doing. By then, Iblis had just replaced his father as head of the Ifrit, and he swore to himself that _his_ administration was going to be a lot better than Iblis Sr.'s. The shock of finding his little sister standing on his doorstep in London, dripping wet from the heavy rain and her own tears, was almost enough to make Iblis have a heart attack, though very few djinn have ever been reported as having what is known in the medical world as a Myocardial Infarction or a Coronary Thrombosis.

Immediately, Iblis invited her in, made her a cup of tea, and urged her to tell him her story. Regretfully, Dimme outlined the past fifty years for her brother, most importantly telling him of how she had met a very powerful demon, Beelzebub, also known as The Lord of the Flies.

"You did what?" Iblis remembered himself shouting, and rising from his own comfortable armchair. He had been almost shocked out of his skin, (quite literally,) at Dimme's news of her first child, a half-djinn, half-demon that she expected within six months.

"I didn't know where else to go, who else to turn to, Iblis." Dimme had said, looking up at her brother through her white, lacy handkerchief, tears still pouring from her eyes and down the bridge of her still-snubbed nose. Iblis never forgot that look she had, the look of worry and abandonment, and he couldn't help but give in.

"All right, Dimme. You get off this time, but meddling in the affairs of demons is extremely dangerous. Even bad djinn like you and I can be wounded in some irreparable way." he had told her, chiding as gently as he could, while still maintaining his newly acquired authority.

"Okay," Dimme had nodded, and Iblis had thought, then, that was that. No more problems with demons.

Not even two years later, Iblis was proven wrong. Dimme had insisted that he visit her in Egypt, at a very specific burial place that she had acquired by stealing the deed to the plot of land from the Egyptian government. Curious, Iblis had gone, merely to discover that the same misfortune as before had presented itself to Dimme. Mentally, Iblis wanted to comfort his little sister again, but he knew that this time he had to come down hard. He shouted at her, the first time he'd ever done so. He'd insulted the one-year-old Azazel, calling him "thing" and "hellspawn."

Iblis, like any other djinn, had received his fair share of bad ideas and impossible goals, but he was far from stupid. He knew that one half-djinn, half-demon child could spell disaster for the universe over, but two was more than Iblis could handle, more than all the djinn in the world, both good and bad, could handle, even working together. Little as he liked to admit it, Iblis was deathly afraid of tiny Azazel Teer, and the potential danger he posed to all of djinnkind.

At the time, the tidings of another, potentially very dangerous demonic djinn child had been too much for Iblis to handle, and he lost his temper, especially after Dimme hadn't seemed the least bit repentant about it. It had been then, in a fit of rage, that Iblis had said the only words that he had ever regretted in his extensive lifetime.

"You're a fool, Dimme!" he had screamed furiously at her retreating back, "You're not my sister anymore!"

Dimme had paused, and turned halfway around on the stone step of the tomb, and answered indifferently. "If that is your wish, then so be it." Then she turned and continued up the staircase into the dark Egyptian night, holding her sleeping son in her arms.

After a few minutes, Iblis had followed Dimme's footsteps out of the tomb, started up his black Mercedes benz, and drove back to his house in Cairo, feeling himself detached from the world. With an absolutely emotionless countenance, he mounted the grand marble stairs leading to his expensively furnished bedroom. Still frozen, Iblis had locked all the doors and windows, drawn all the heavy velvet curtains, and snapped the electric light off. Numbly, he lit a half-melted beeswax candle, and used it to light a cigarette, allowing the thin trail of smoke to drift up for awhile before he began smoking.

"What have I done?" Iblis muttered to himself in horror. "Dimme was my only sibling- my only little sister. How could I disown her?"

Iblis recalled, with a pang of remorse, how he had then turned on himself for being foolish. He was Iblis Teer, leader of the Ifrit. There was no space for such silly feelings as affection for a sibling who disobeyed him. No, love could not be permitted to be a part of Iblis' life. Not anymore.

To keep himself preoccupied, Iblis sparred with Nimrod Godwin, not to mention several other important Marid, Jann, and Jinn, including Jenny Sachertorte, upon whom Iblis played a terrible trick, which had eventually culminated in his imprisonment inside the suit of jade.

Despite trying to keep busy, Iblis was still occasionally interrupted by rude awakenings to his rash decision. On more than one occasion, Azazel, his own nephew, had attempted to kill Iblis. Iblis supposed that this was because Dimme had told her son about her shame in the djinn world, and wished for revenge, on her behalf. It was the attempts on his life that had made it easy for Iblis to hate Azazel.

To the world, Iblis seemed carelessly evil, his cunning exceeding almost all other djinn's- he was quite infamous, and seemed to revel in the attention.

On the inside, however, Iblis was nothing but turmoil, through and through. Sometimes, when he was all alone in the dead of night, Iblis would simply sit down and weep. Weep for what he had done.

And now, trapped in his jade sepulcher, Iblis was responsible for even more of his family falling apart. He'd dragged Rudyard, his second-youngest son, into harms way, manipulated Dybbuk into losing all of his power for Iblis' own gain- who knew what would happen to poor Dybbuk next- and had even lost his own body to a pair of djinn tigers. But the jewel in his crown of misfortunes was, above all else, losing the one person that he'd truly cared for. Even beyond death, which was very likely soon in coming, Iblis would never forget his little sister, the only real friend he'd ever had.


End file.
